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I went through a similar experience when rigging up my own little "child sleep improver" project. We play the same album of world music lullabies when our kids

by Fuzzwah 10y ago

I went through a similar experience when rigging up my own little "child sleep improver" project. We play the same album of world music lullabies when our kids go to bed. I wanted to be able to trigger playback remotely, so if I heard my child stirring I could play the lullabies again and help them settle again. I'm also a R-Pi fan, so I rigged one up which allows me to have mplayer start playing the album via a simple webpage which I access from my mobile phone. That is excellent for the middle of the night times, but when we put the child into bed at night I wanted a simple button to press to do the same thing. I hunted around and just could not bring myself to pay $50 to $100 for a damn button! Especially if I had to rely on some web service... It just seemed ridiculous. In the end I realised that I could just use a cheap wireless mouse. It is stuck onto the change table; we left click to trigger playback, right click to stop, mouse wheel to volume up or down.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
foobarian 10y ago
Along that vein I stuck an R-Pi into a radio and rigged it to autoplay all MP3s on an inserted USB stick. Then I gave my small kids (2 and 3) small cheap colored USB sticks with different albums on them (Frozen, dancing, kid songs, etc.). It kind of replicates the "insert disc" experience for them and they love it.
- Fuzzwah 10y ago
  I have something similar to that too! Mine is based on an R-Pi that I've got an RFID card reader hanging off, which triggers playback of music in Kodi (aka XBMC) Here's a video demo I made ages ago of a very early version (before I learned how to capture the RFID reader prior to Kodi/XBMC grabbing it, which allowed me to eliminate the MK802 device): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwyq2xqjHW0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwyq2xqjHW0 My toddler loves it and thinks that the standard interface for playing music is to select a card from the magnetic board and swipe it against the reader. As a special bit of fun, I've also cut open some cards and bit the RFID loop into a few of her toys. When she swipes them the appropriate theme tune plays. I worked on the system recently to add a web interface to manage the playlists and cards, but I haven't made the code available on github yet. Though I do have a repo with the old version here: https://github.com/Fuzzwah/xbmc-rfid-music https://github.com/Fuzzwah/xbmc-rfid-music
  - sleepychu 10y ago
    I've always wanted a big stack of record cover sized tokens that do this. Would love your latest code :-)
  - scoopr 10y ago
    Is there a forum or a place where all you dad-hackers share and talk about your projects? I'm curious :)
    - Fuzzwah 10y ago
      Not that I'm aware of, but based on the interest in my comments here I feel like there definitely should be.
      - sleepychu 10y ago
        dad-hackers.club registered for 1$. Anyone got recommendations for forum software that doesn't suck?
        scoopr 10y ago
        Unfortunately no, I believe ‘forum software that doesn't suck’ is a oxymoron. Most big forums that I follow have lately jumped to xenforo, which is commercial. Another option would be a Wordpress, with lax rules on posting, akin to how ludumdare.com is setup.
        sleepychu 10y ago
        Could potentially do something with github pages? Use jekyll to generate the site and then accept pull requests for new articles then something (HN?) for comments?
        TrevorJ 10y ago
        No, but I'll definitely use the site! :)
Fuzzwah 10y ago
Since this seems to have caught some interest I may as well share the github repo where I've got my (dodgy) code: https://github.com/Fuzzwah/mplayer-web-mouse-control https://github.com/Fuzzwah/mplayer-web-mouse-control
sdegutis 10y ago
> We play the same album of world music lullabies when our kids go to bed. I wanted to be able to trigger playback remotely, so if I heard my child stirring I could play the lullabies again and help them settle again. FWIW that's super creepy and dystopian. In fact, now that I think of it, more and more posts and comments on HN are really dystopianically unsettling lately.
- jimmaswell 10y ago
  Is this comment satire? I guess baby monitors are dystopian too now.
- TrevorJ 10y ago
  Kids: do you have them?

by Fuzzwah 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

foobarian 10y ago

Along that vein I stuck an R-Pi into a radio and rigged it to autoplay all MP3s on an inserted USB stick. Then I gave my small kids (2 and 3) small cheap colored USB sticks with different albums on them (Frozen, dancing, kid songs, etc.). It kind of replicates the "insert disc" experience for them and they love it.

Fuzzwah 10y ago
I have something similar to that too! Mine is based on an R-Pi that I've got an RFID card reader hanging off, which triggers playback of music in Kodi (aka XBMC) Here's a video demo I made ages ago of a very early version (before I learned how to capture the RFID reader prior to Kodi/XBMC grabbing it, which allowed me to eliminate the MK802 device): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwyq2xqjHW0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwyq2xqjHW0 My toddler loves it and thinks that the standard interface for playing music is to select a card from the magnetic board and swipe it against the reader. As a special bit of fun, I've also cut open some cards and bit the RFID loop into a few of her toys. When she swipes them the appropriate theme tune plays. I worked on the system recently to add a web interface to manage the playlists and cards, but I haven't made the code available on github yet. Though I do have a repo with the old version here: https://github.com/Fuzzwah/xbmc-rfid-music https://github.com/Fuzzwah/xbmc-rfid-music
- sleepychu 10y ago
  I've always wanted a big stack of record cover sized tokens that do this. Would love your latest code :-)
- scoopr 10y ago
  Is there a forum or a place where all you dad-hackers share and talk about your projects? I'm curious :)
  - Fuzzwah 10y ago
    Not that I'm aware of, but based on the interest in my comments here I feel like there definitely should be.
    - sleepychu 10y ago
      dad-hackers.club registered for 1$. Anyone got recommendations for forum software that doesn't suck?
      - scoopr 10y ago
        Unfortunately no, I believe ‘forum software that doesn't suck’ is a oxymoron. Most big forums that I follow have lately jumped to xenforo, which is commercial. Another option would be a Wordpress, with lax rules on posting, akin to how ludumdare.com is setup.
        sleepychu 10y ago
        Could potentially do something with github pages? Use jekyll to generate the site and then accept pull requests for new articles then something (HN?) for comments?
      - TrevorJ 10y ago
        No, but I'll definitely use the site! :)

Fuzzwah 10y ago

Since this seems to have caught some interest I may as well share the github repo where I've got my (dodgy) code: https://github.com/Fuzzwah/mplayer-web-mouse-control https://github.com/Fuzzwah/mplayer-web-mouse-control

sdegutis 10y ago

> We play the same album of world music lullabies when our kids go to bed. I wanted to be able to trigger playback remotely, so if I heard my child stirring I could play the lullabies again and help them settle again. FWIW that's super creepy and dystopian. In fact, now that I think of it, more and more posts and comments on HN are really dystopianically unsettling lately.

jimmaswell 10y ago
Is this comment satire? I guess baby monitors are dystopian too now.
TrevorJ 10y ago
Kids: do you have them?